Firechick12012's Profile - Reviews

Last Online5 hours ago
GenderFemale
BirthdayJun 25, 1993
JoinedJul 15, 2010

Anime List Manga List

May 25, 2024

Oya ga Urusai node Kouhai (♀) to Gisou Kekkon Shitemita. (Manga) add

Mixed Feelings

No, your eyes do not deceive you, I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up is the actual title of this fairly short yuri manga. And I really do mean short, as it's only about three chapters long. Yes, really. But what's it about, you might ask? All her life, Machi Morimoto has lived for the sole purpose of meeting her parents' very high expectations and doing everything they tell her to do, no matter how much she might be opposed to it. But currently, she's grown tired of her parents pressuring her to marry a man of their choosing, knowing that they're ... only doing it so they can brag about having a son-in-law. In comes an old acquaintance, Hana Agaya, who needs a place to stay while her apartment building's being renovated, and convinces Machi to fake a marriage with her as a way to solve both their problems. But there's a catch: while Machi is straight, Hana is gay, and both are aware that Hana was interested in her romantically back in school. Machi has to figure out how to deal with this new "relationship", as well as navigate her possibly changing feelings toward her "wife".

From what I can see, the artwork is pretty nice. Nothing that'll bring the house down, but it does its job. The panels are easy to follow, the character designs are decent and down-to-earth, and the backgrounds are the right amount of detailed without being intrusive. If I can name one complaint though, it'd be that the mangaka relies way too much on screentones for everything. Seriously, they put them on shadows, clothing, random knick-knacks in the background, transition panels, I don't think there's any scene that doesn't have screentones. They're all over the place to the point that it's really hard to ignore them. They really ought to dial them back a bit. Eh, the art itself is competent, and I'm sure the mangaka is doing the best they can. Not everyone can be Kamome Shirahama or Kentaro Miura.

The manga also has a fairly small cast of characters, and the only one who really receives much in the way of development is Machi. If there's one thing about the manga that I appreciate, it's that the artist doesn't waste any time. The pacing is fast, yet not so fast that you can't follow what's going on, and the artist makes good use of the short time they have to flesh out Machi as a person and show her changing over the course of these three chapters. There's no filler so the story never feels bloated, and any potential cliches that are typical of the romance genre are actually skillfully avoided. You know how in most romance media, someone will suspect their boy/girlfriend is having an affair when they find out they're with an ex, even if the context isn't romantic, and they jump to conclusions that result in a lot of pointless drama? I'm so glad that I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up doesn't go that route and instead has Machi just go to where Hana is, at her ex's bar, and they talk things out afterward. Speaking of other characters, I do wish Hana got more background aside from just having a crush on Machi. I would have liked to have learned her history with her ex, Ayaka. Machi is the most developed character in the cast, which is fine since she's the main focus of the story and has a good head on her shoulders, but I wish more had been done with the other characters.

Yeah, there really isn't much to talk about with I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up. It's a nice little time killer that's short, sweet, and to the point without coming across as saccharine or shallow. It's short length can be a dealbreaker for those who want something longer to read. While I do wish the manga had been longer so the other characters can be expanded on, it does manage to make good use of the time it does have, and it doesn't try to drag itself out, so I don't mind what we do have. But you're looking for something longer and has more meat to it, you'd best look elsewhere. I did enjoy my time with I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up, though there are other romance and even shoujo-ai manga I enjoyed a lot more, but feel free to check this out if you're looking for something short and sweet.

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May 24, 2024

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho (Anime) add

Recommended

Seriously, was ANYONE expecting a show like A Place Further Than The Universe? And for it to turn out to be great? On the surface, it looked like it was going to be yet another cookie cutter cute-girls-doing-cute-things show. But then it was revealed it was going to be about the main characters going to Antarctica. Show of hands, who there thought "Oh man, this is gonna be sooooo bad!" and assumed it'd completely botch its premise in favor of cutesy anime schoolgirl shenanigans? Even I was kinda flummoxed and wondered how the show would even tackle that premise. And then the first episode aired ... and people changed their opinions on it right away, me included. The show then proceeded to become one of the most popular and talked about during the winter 2018 season, to the point where it was flat-out featured on the friggin' New York Times! How? How did this happen? What's even so special about this show anyway? A lot of things, actually, and I'm in full agreement that Place Further Than The Universe absolutely earned its acclaim.

16-year-old Mari Tamaki has made a terrible discovery: She hasn't managed to do anything interesting with her life so far! Not for lack of trying on her part, but Kimari's the type of person to get anxious and back out at the last minute whenever she even attempts to try something new, and can never seem to get past that block no matter how hard she tries. Then one day, she sees a girl from her school racing past her at the train station. The girl loses an envelope that turns out to be filled with cash–one million yen. That's a lot of money for a high school girl to have on her, isn't it? When Mari tracks her down, the girl in question, Shirase Kobuchizawa, tells Mari that her mother was lost on an Antarctic research trip when she was in middle school, and now her goal is to raise money to go find her. She invites Mari to go along with her on the trip, which just may be the push that Mari needs to finally begin living the life she wants. Together with two other girls, cheerful yet mature Hinata Miyake and snarky celebrity Yuzuki Shiraishi, they make their way to Antarctica, down in the farthest regions of the Earth.

I'm no expert on Antarctica, but any person with even a sliver of knowledge of Antarctica or how to get there will tell you that going there is no easy feat. It's easy to assume that, in the wrong hands, A Place Further Than The Universe would use the setting as little more than a shiny backdrop for cutesy moe adventures, ignoring all the danger and rules that come with actually going there. Thankfully, the show itself has no interest in shallow, surface level effort and actually treats the actual trip to Antarctica very seriously, addressing every question viewers might have for it: How do they get there? How would they even be able to get permission to go? Where do they get the money? What do they need to take with them? How will they be able to deal with the potential dangers there? Every stage of the trip is planned out in meticulous detail, showing that the creators really put in the work and research to make the premise feel palpable and believable. Some might not like that the girls don't manage to actually get to Antarctica until episode 9, but I think the build-up is worth it because the work that goes into actually getting to Antarctica is just as important as the actual destination, and having the kids just appear there out of nowhere would feel really cheap and unearned.

But A Place Further Than The Universe can't just bank itself on its premise alone, and thankfully, the show's writers conjured a great cast of characters to follow on their journeys of self-discovery and self-actualization. All four of the main girls each have their own goals and reasons for taking the trip to Antarctica, making them feel more significant than just "We wanna go to this awesome place!" and they're all wonderfully fleshed out and developed, to the point where you can't explain their arcs and personalities in just one sentence. The series makes it a point to deconstruct the usual character archetypes associated with CGDCT shows, even if the show itself doesn't quite fit the CGDCT mold because of it's more ambitious adventure/coming of age story type plot, and any drama that comes from it actually feels natural and makes sense rather than feeling forced, cheesy, and cheap. I do feel more could have been done with every side character that's not Gin or Takako, but Place Further Than The Universe put them to good use, and the main four girls carry the show perfectly. Honestly, the only character I can say I actually hated was that one lady who's always whining about her boyfriend. Seriously, what even is the point of this character? She's completely useless and does literally nothing but whine and cry about her boyfriend.

The animation for this series also does a lot to elevate the show. For a series like this, Madhouse put a surprising amount of care and detail into everything, from expressive character motion, to the lush, detailed backgrounds, to creative lighting that changes depending on the mood and atmosphere of a scene, and so on. Even the CGI, thankfully, is kept to where it's appropriate and never intrudes on the 2D animation. What else is there to say about it that others haven't said already? It really surprises me how much care was put into this, and Madhouse didn't need to go this hard, but they did, and a lot of it has to do with director Atsuko Ishizuka, who I admittedly don't know a whole lot about, and I've never seen No Game No Life, nor do I want to. But after seeing Yorimoi and her later movie Goodbye Don Glees, I really hope she gets to do more stuff, because she and her team have proven they have talent. The soundtrack is pretty nice too, soft and appropriately moody when it needs to be, and the opening, ending, and insert songs are all used to great effect and fit the show perfectly...though was it really necessary to have insert songs in literally EVERY SINGLE episode? Eh, that's really my only complaint about it.

Yorimoi also has great pacing and every episode feels carefully planned out. No scene ever feels wasted, and I never felt like the series left any loose ends hanging. The story itself is well told and given the right amount of gravitas and emotional weight that is required for something like going to Antarctica. A series about anime girls going to Antarctica shouldn't work on paper, but the team at Madhouse managed to make it work, and by framing the journey to Antarctica as being more about growing as a person, embracing your true self, and facing all the unknowns that come with adolescence, all of its dramatic beats actually felt earned. And really, A Place Further Than The Universe really has no business being this good. This is a show that I'd recommend to just about anyone, and it's a great example of what an original anime production can do when it's allowed to tell a story from beginning to end. Now that it's finally out on blu-ray in the US, complete with an English dub, it's more accessible, though you will have to pay a pretty penny to buy said blu-ray. I did, and I don't regret it one bit.

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May 19, 2024

Air (Anime) add

Recommended

I've been watching anime since I was a kid, growing up with stuff like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, and Hamtaro, but it wasn't until 2005-2007 that I began to really look into what anime really was and dip my toes deeper into stuff outside what was airing on TV. I actually came across fansubs of Air while looking for another show, and knowing nothing about it, I watched it and I wound up enjoying it. Fun fact: This, along with Ouran High School Host Club, were some of the first anime I watched fansubbed, before they were brought to the US on home video. I didn't ... learn about the concept of licensing until later. I used to think anything that wasn't on TV was only in Japan until I learned that anime and their English dubs could only be watched on DVD, not on TV (Depending on the series). I enjoyed Air enough that I bought the DVDs (The movie included), though I did exchange them for a complete collection later. Air is an adaptation of one of Key's visual novels, and the anime was pretty well-liked when it first aired, though it would quickly get overshadowed years later by Clannad. While I do enjoy Clannad a little more, I still have a sentimental attachment to Air as a series, and rewatching it now, while some parts of it didn't age all that well, I still think it's a great show made by people who clearly loved the source material and did it justice.

Traveling street performer Yukito Kunisaki arrives at a small seaside town called Kami, having traversed around Japan in continuation of his late mother's search for the "girl in the sky" who, according to a family legend, has been cursed to spend eternity all alone. Yukito's sole way of earning money is by performing a puppet show by moving a doll that has been passed down in his family with magic, but he fails to gain anyone's attention by doing so, and as a result, he's low on money. The next day, he meets Misuzu Kamio—a sincere yet clumsy high school girl who is eager to become friends with him. He accepts her offer to eat lunch at her home, and Misuzu's aunt and foster mother Haruko Kamio is later persuaded to let him stay for the time being. Later on, Yukito meets two other girls who go to Misuzu's school—sly, friendly Kano Kirishima and serene, quiet Minagi Tohno—who, like Misuzu, have strange personalities connected with mysterious pasts. Any one of them could be the incarnation of this "girl in the sky," and if the curse isn't broken, the girl in question could die.

If you can believe it, this is technically the first anime produced by Kyoto Animation all by themselves, without the need for outsourcing, which is what they themselves were known for providing to other studios throughout the 80s and 90s. If there's one thing KyoAni is famous for, its for its attention to making movement as smooth, detailed, and life-like as possible. Say what you will about Itaru Hinoue's over-the-top cutesy moe character designs, with their comically big eyes and small mouths on large chins, KyoAni managed to not only have them transition to animation quite nicely, but really put in the effort to make them come alive with fantastic character movement. Everything from clothing, walking, and hair animation is given as much care and attention as humanly possible, and even in scenes that would normally be static, such as characters standing around talking, the animators still put in the work. It helps that even mundane conversations are made visually interesting with intimate camera angles, absolutely stunning backgrounds, and creative, cinematic storyboarding. Real talk, I never had any problem with Itaru Hinoue's character designs, and still don't to this day, because I've seen way worse, and whether you like them or not, those designs at least made Air distinct and gave it a sense of identity. Personally, my only real issue is that the whites in the characters' eyes look distractingly blurry, like someone used the photoshop brush tool on them, which, to be fair, KyoAni improved on when they would go on to make the anime for both Kanon and Clannad.

Really, there isn't much to say about the soundtrack that hasn't been said already, so I'll be brief: Yes, it reuses music from the game, but all of it is great, and Tori no Uta is still one of the best anime openings ever, no cap. Before I even go into the characters, there is something I want to talk about: For as revered as the works by Key are even now, there are many who dismiss their stories and narratives as emotionally manipulative. On some level, I can understand where they're coming from, as most companies think having cute moe girls be sad is all they need to get people to cry and spend money. Hell, I have this view on Prima Doll, another Key property, which I feel tried way too hard to push being cutesy moe over making any logical sense and putting in the work to get you to care about the characters and story. Again, I haven't played the VN for Air yet, so I don't know how it handles its narrative and characterization, but personally, I don't think Air is emotionally manipulative because unlike most moe shows, it's very clear that the staff behind the anime respected the source material and put in the work to get you to care about the characters and their interpersonal conflicts, and any so-called "moe" qualities they have do have in-story explanations behind them rather than just being there for the sake of having them be uwu pwecious. For example, Misuzu's quirks—her clumsiness, acting younger than her age would suggest, and tendency to make cutesy dinosaur noises—are treated as weird and causes for concern rather than as endearing. Air takes great pains to flesh out its characters and develop them, making them feel like more than just squeaky-voiced moeblobs, even if their characterization still can't be considered three-dimensional compared to others down the line. Not every character gets this treatment though, and out of the three girls, Kano is the weakest one because her story is just there to give more info on the "girl in the sky" legend and make her into a red herring, that's it. Without going into spoilers, Misuzu's mother Haruko is the most complex, compelling, three-dimensional character in the whole cast, and Air did an amazing job at bringing this conflicted, hard-partying mom to life, especially in the finale. Even Yukito winds up having more to him than just being the snarky, disillusioned self-insert MC that Key is usually known for.

As far as the narrative goes, Air as a series is surprisingly well paced, having a clear plan on how it wanted to tell its story, build up to its twists, and wasted absolutely no time in doing what it needed to do. Being that this is a short series based on a much longer visual novel, I'm sure a lot of stuff wasn't adapted, and fans of the VN might consider it to be rushed as a result. I wouldn't say that's KyoAni's fault because they were only given 12 episodes to work with, and the staff made the most of what they had. However, much like the rest of Key's works, Air is a series that, while it does put in the work to have an overarching narrative that makes sense, a lot of the supernatural elements don't get a whole lot of explanations behind them and really require you to stretch your suspension of disbelief. I personally had no problem with how Air did it, as the series did try to tie everything together as much as it could, made as much use of its overarching themes as possible, and had it all work in the context of its narrative, but if you're someone who wants your stories to feel more complete and logical, you will find yourself disappointed. In my opinion, I think Air's story and how it tied everything together and made use of its cast of characters worked in its favor, allowing all of the drama it set up to actually feel earned rather than cheap and slapped together for the sake of easy emotional manipulation. I actually consider One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e to be fair more cheap in its drama and actually emotionally manipulative because unlike Air, One thought it could get by with just cutesy moeblobs, a stick thin storyline, and an MC who is a repugnant jackass and didn't bother putting in the work to make us care about any of it.

Say what you will about Air as an anime, it did help put KyoAni on the map as a serious animation studio, and its success paved the way for the studio's explosive success in the late 2000s, resulting in many other anime people still love to this day. I liked Air when I first watched it as a kid, and I'm surprised at how well it still holds up when I rewatched it as an adult. While I do enjoy the anime for Clannad a bit more, I still have a soft spot for Air, as it was one of the first anime I saw that showed me that anime could tell many more kinds of stories than just Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Digimon. Plus, now that I'm older and know how to use an emulator on my computer, I found a way to actually play the visual novel now, so expect a review of that in the future! Though with the new advent of Kanon finally getting an official release in English in the near future, here's hoping Air gets that same treatment. Is Air sappy and melodramatic? Sure. You can either embrace it as a heartwrenching drama, or just dismiss it as moe fodder made to cater to the fetishes of lonely otaku. Whatever floats your boat, and everyone's mileage may vary for something like Air, or Key's entire portfolio in general. But to me, Air is a nicely crafted drama made by people that truly loved its source material, made the most of the short time it had, and managed to expand my horizons for what anime is capable of, and for that, while it's not one of my favorite anime of all time, as I like several shows better than it, Air will always a place in my heart.

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Apr 23, 2024

Rakudai Majo: Fuuka to Yami no Majo (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Okay, I know you're looking at that rating and thinking to yourself "What's so bad about this children's movie that you feel the need to rate it so low? Maybe you shouldn't be watching kids stuff if you're just gonna hate it!" But here's the thing: I had no idea that The Klutzy Witch would be as bad as it turned out. If anything, I was looking forward to it! Also, there's a lot of kids stuff I watched that I legitimately enjoy, some I love to death, others not as much. I just watched the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie today, for the first time ... in years, and it didn't bring the house down, but I enjoyed my time with it. Some of my favorite shows and movies of all time are aimed at kids, and a lot of that is because the media by themselves respected their audience, not talking down to them and respecting their intelligence. The Klutzy Witch: Fuka and the Witch of Darkness is not only just a generic, juvenile children's movie, it actively goes out of its way to insult its audience's intelligence at every turn.

Based on the children's book series by Satoko Narita, the series focuses on Fuka, an energetic apprentice witch and the princess of the Silver Castle. She aspires to be just like her elegant mother, Leia the Silver Queen, but there are several problems with that: Not only does she absolutely suck at even the most basic of magic spells, she sucks at school in general and can't do anything right no matter how hard she tries. Even support from her friends Karin, the princess of the Green Castle, and Chitose, the youngest prince of the Blue Castle (Get used to all the color coded kingdom names, because they're present throughout), can't seem to cut it for her. One day, while she's lamenting both her latest blunder and the fact that she doesn't know who her father is, a little girl named Lilica demands Fuka take her to a sealed off room, browbeating her into doing so. When they get there, Lilica slaps a bracelet onto Fuka, and said bracelet awakens the evil Megaera, the Witch of Darkness, who transports Fuka and her friends to a spooky realm with plans to take over Fuka's body and defeat those who defeated her in years past. The trio must work together to defeat Megaera and save their realms from the forces of darkness.

Normally a simply story like this wouldn't be too bad. Stuff like The Worst Witch, Little Witch Academia, and Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure have done stuff like this before with varying degrees of success. I'm not kidding you, The Klutzy Witch seems intent on doing everything that you shouldn't do when making a story like this. For one thing, this movie's writing is extremely juvenile and condescending in that the movie relays every single bit of important information via telling over showing. Rather than having the audience learn about the characters organically, the movie just info-dumps their personalities to us via voice-over narration, which would normally be fine if this was done once, like in the beginning, but the movie does this several times throughout, even right in the middle, going so far as to just...explain how these people know each other rather than letting the audience deduce that themselves! Seriously, every iteration of My Little Pony besides G3 was never this patronizing!

This even extends to the characters, who aren't so much characters as they are cliche plot devices that spout moralizing dialogue about the power of friendship and act according to what the plot demands. Fuka suffers the worst of this because all throughout the movie, she's literally nothing but a damsel in distress who not only never manages to do anything on her own, but every time she's in some danger, something or someone, usually a Deus Ex Machina that comes right the fuck out of nowhere, always has to rescue her or do everything for her. No, I'm not kidding, she gets in trouble and rescued by someone a grand total of six times in this! Six times, all in the span of the movie's one-hour run time! Yes, I counted! Mary Jane Watson in the Spider Man movies ain't got nothing on Fuka. And the few times she manages to do something don't even feel earned because she only gets good at magic because of random Deus Ex Machinas that fall into her lap that make her suddenly awesome at magic because hurr-durr power of friendship wins the day. There are some characters who flat-out appear out of nowhere such as Keith, and even one character, a green haired boy with a cat, who only appears in one scene and then never again! Why even put that kid in there if you're not even gonna use him for anything?! Even the villain's motivations are extremely weak and juvenile.

The movie can't even make its premise make any lick of sense. For one, the movie claims that Fuka is supposedly cursed because she can't use magic as well as everyone else, with Fuka herself even sympathizing with Megeara because she thinks they share similar circumstances. But this falls completely flat because the movie never shows Megaera being anything but evil until the last five minutes, and it can't even be bothered to show her backstory. Furthermore, Fuka isn't cursed, she just sucks at magic, and every person in this movie would much rather punish her and berate her for not knowing how to control her magic rather than, y'know, actually make an attempt to help her control it, which isn't the same as being cursed. Plus, Fuka has friends, so any claim Fuka makes that she was also shunned also falls flat. So not only does this movie not know how to handle its characters or premise, it just throws away plot beats as quickly as it introduces them. For example, when Keith meets up with the trio, Chitose acts like he doesn't want to be anywhere near the guy, implying he's probably racist towards those in the Black Castle (Gee, that totally doesn't have unfortunate connotations in any way whatsoever, now does it?), but this aspect of his character is never elaborated on nor explained. Finally, for as much as the movie makes a big deal about Fuka wanting to learn more about her dad, in the end, she doesn't learn anything about him and the whole thing is just...dropped with no real resolution whatsoever. Considering that this movie is only an hour long, The Klutzy Witch really could have benefited from another half hour just so it could actually expand on this stuff. The ending is also just a really cheesy, cliche, mealymouthed resolution that relies on the power of friendship to magically fix everything because we can't bother to have actual stakes, riiiight?

And honestly, the animation isn't much to write home about either. The characters all have the same face and the action scenes aren't all that impressive either. The movie's budget doesn't look much different from a TV show, which is weird because Production IG usually puts out pretty good animation for whatever they make. This is not one of them. Now, if all of this was all that was wrong with The Klutzy Witch, I would have rated it somewhere between 55-60 out of 100, and that's being generous. It would have just been another generic children's movie that doesn't have much substance, but I would have left it at just that...but then the movie had the gall to completely obliterate what little goodwill I had for it by shoehorning in a FUCKING PSEUDO-INCEST REVEAL IN THAT LILICA WANTS TO MARRY HER ADOPTED BROTHER!!!! THE FUCK?!? Why movie?! Why the fuck would you just throw in a completely unnecessary pseudo-incest moment like that?! Not only does it not add anything to the story, it only makes Lilica (when she's not possessed by Megaera) an even worse character and leaves a pretty big black stain on what should be an inoffensive children's movie!! God, whose bright idea was this? Because I want to deck them so hard.

Speaking of Lilica, now that I think about it, a lot of what happens in the movie isn't even Fuka's fault at all. The movie reveals that everything is Lilica's fault, because the only reason Megaera managed to possess her is because Lilica happened to be flying around Silver Castle (With dialogue implying that she left Black Castle without permission) and just happened to be Megaera's target. Lilica, while under Megaera's possession, pretty much pressures and browbeats Fuka into wearing the bracelet that kept Megaera sealed, literally shoving it on her wrist, and is Megaera's meat puppet throughout the entire movie. But even after she's freed from Megaera's control, she's not only revealed to be an annoying tsundere who hates Fuka because how dare her brother Keith be interested in a girl that's not Lilica, she doesn't even acknowledge her own part in all of this and flat-out escapes punishment, with Fuka taking the blame for everything! That's...really messed up, and a pretty bad message to put in a kid's movie: "It doesn't matter if you were forced to do something because someone pressured you and were victimized by someone else, the fact you did this bad thing at all is bad, so you need to be punished and face the consequences while the person actually responsible walks scot-free! La dee da!" Good lord...

Man, I really wish I didn't hate this movie. I wanted so badly to like this. But I really can't mince words here: This is one of the most patronizing, insulting, condescending, and downright juvenile children's movies I've ever seen, though it's nowhere near as bad as A Troll In Central Park in my opinion. If you want good media about clumsy kid witches, just watch The Worst Witch, Little Witch Academia, The Owl House, or even Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure. All of those are far more worth your time and are way better than wasting an hour on The Klutzy Witch.

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Apr 11, 2024

Shadows House (Anime) add

Recommended

(This review covers both seasons 1 and 2)

Hey kids! Do you like gothic mystery with a side of mild eldritch horror in the mix? Do you like the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales or the ones by Hans Christian Andersen? Do you want something that harkens to all you Victorian era loving Hot Topic goth kids? Do I have the show for you. Shadows House is an anime based on the ongoing manga by Somato. It centers on a mysterious Western-style mansion high atop a cliff, where mysterious, faceless beings known as Shadows, whose entire bodies are as black as coal and emit soot depending ... on their emotional state. Because they have no faces of their own, they have servants known as Living Dolls, with each shadow being assigned their own individual Living Doll. Such is the case for young Emilico, a bubbly, curious blonde girl who lives to serve her more stoic, quiet mistress Kate. But Emilico can't help but wonder just what Shadows House is all about. Who are the Shadows? Why do they emit soot? Why are they revered as nobles? Why must living dolls not think of "trivial matters" i.e. anything that isn't serving their masters? What even are the Living Dolls? Shadows House is full of mysteries, and Kate and Emilico soon find themselves uncovering all sorts of terrible secrets.

If I were to describe Shadows House as a show, it'd probably be a mix of something like Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and to a lesser extent Hansel and Gretel, since the former two are gothic, atmospheric mysteries with dark understones and the latter is about children being trapped by a wicked villain for unscrupulous purposes. The whole series feels like an old Western fairy tale given new paint, with the animation reflecting this. I haven't read the manga, though I do want to at some point, the animation, done by CloverWorks, manages to really bring Shadows House and its creepy atmosphere to life. Everything about Shadow Houses' production feels ornate, from the patterned embroidery on the Shadows' clothing to the gardens and long hallways, it really oozes that Victorian gothic aesthetic. Of course, the animation itself is no slouch either. It's not exactly a sakuga-fest bursting with kineticism, but the actual character movement does its job well, and nothing looked off-model to my eyes. The music also manages to be similarly eerie and creepy when it needs to, and fairly versatile even without going for that vibe, using everything from low cellos to high violins. Both sets of openings and endings are also well made and well sung.

The core of Shadow House's whole premise is its cast of characters, namely the fact that every single shadow is paired with a living doll who is supposed to serve as their face, so you'll be seeing a lot of pairs in this show. There's a lot of characters in the show, and some manage to receive some development while others don't. Part of this is deliberate, as the truth behind why the shadows and Living Dolls are what they are is one of the main mysteries of the show, but even with 26 episodes, Shadows House doesn't get to give every single named character their time in the limelight. I did find the main ensemble to be interesting to follow, both the shadows and their Living Dolls, and they manage to carry the show just fine, with their development culminating quite a bit in season two. Some of the side characters get some time to do stuff as well, but the rest of them just either take up space or only do very little before getting shunted into the background. I found Edward in particular to be rather grating, as he's just your typical cartoon villain who hates the heroes and plots against them for seemingly no reason. He probably has more to him in the manga. Also, I liked Emilico just fine, but I can see some people finding her perpetually sunny personality to be a little too saccharine and cutesy for their tastes.

I'm normally not one for mystery series, and seeing as Shadows House's anime is based on an ongoing manga, not every plot thread is going to be wrapped up or followed up on, which is inevitable when adapting a manga that hasn't ended yet. I will say that season two's finale did leave me wanting, not only because it introduces a new character and setting up a new plot thread that we know will never be adapted into anime, but the actual ending itself was really abrupt and made no attempt to hide its "read the manga!" message. There were also points that had me really confused, such as having Kate know certain bits of information while not showing how she managed to learn said information in the first place, an example being when she tries to rile up Barbara early in season two by using a certain someone against her...even though there was nothing in the show that explained how she even learned about said person beforehand. I don't know if the anime accidentally left out some details for the sake of pacing, but it just felt odd to me.

Even so, my gripes with it and its cliffhanger ending aside, I did enjoy my time with Shadows House, enough that I do plan on reading the manga when I have the time and funds. It's a slowly-evolving mystery series that really feels like a Western fairy tale in all the best ways.

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Mar 23, 2024

Sousou no Frieren (Anime) add

Recommended

We're all familiar with the hero's journey, where we observe a young sword-bearing hero rise from humble beginnings, gathers a party of allies, and travels the world to defeat a great evil threatening all of humanity. They've been around since the time of Greek myths, and even now, we still get stories about heroes fighting evil across all forms of media, because that premise is instantly recognizeable. Some are done well, some are done badly. But recently, some writers decided to ask the question "What happens after the heroes defeat the great evil?" Most stories end right as the villain is defeated, but have you ... ever wondered what the heroes' lives are like after the fact? Do they retire, or do they still go adventuring for the thrill of it? Does the hero's party stay in contact, or do they go their separate ways? Somebody decided to try answering all those questions, but doing so from the perspective of an immortal elf and having the story lean hard into what it means to make connections and how important the time you spend with your friends and the memories you make together are, no matter how fleeting. That's how we got Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Screw all those dumb power fantasy/wish fulfillment isekais, if you ask me, Frieren is where its at! Sure enough, everyone else seems to agree, as Frieren has become massively popular since its inception, favoring heartfelt, character driven drama over your typical shounen battle action, and it's all the better for it. But a story like this absolutely needs to be adapted by people who not only understand the material to the letter, but know how to really elevate it into an animated medium rather than just simply copying it from text to screen. Thankfully, the team at Madhouse exceed people's expectations, mine included, and managed to make Frieren truly shine.

Based on the manga by Tsukasa Abe and Kanehito Yamada, the story is as follows: For a decade, the immortal elf Frieren traveled with Himmel the hero, Heiter the priest, and Eisen the dwarf on a journey to defeat the evil Demon King. They managed to do just that, and their efforts are celebrated and exalted by everyone all over the continent. The party decides to go their separate ways, and with Frieren being an elf who doesn't quite understand how time flows differently for her as it does for humans, she sets out on her own, just doing her own thing as she pleases. She reunites with them fifty years later, but not long after, Himmel dies of old age. It's only then that she realizes that even though she spent ten years with him, she never truly got to know him, and now that he's gone, she'll never get the chance to do so. Frieren begins to ponder the nature of connections at a time when it's already too late to say goodbye. This time, she sets out on a new journey, with a new band of companions, to see the world she had already explored with a new perspective, experiencing all the danger and joy that comes with it.

It's been a while since I've read the manga, even though I own all the volumes that are out in the US right now, so I don't quite remember the nitty-gritty details about the manga's paneling and artwork. But like I mentioned above, Frieren is the type of story that absolutely NEEDS a good, proper adaptation that treats the source with respect, and bad adaptations often do the opposite. Remember Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer and Tale of the Outcasts? Luckily, the staff at Madhouse absolutely understood the assignment. There's so much care put into the animation in this show, from the lush, gorgeous backgrounds to even little things like the movement of fabric and each characters' unique body language, not to mention the dynamic action scenes that actually feel like they have weight to them. Case in point, the scene where Stark kills the Solar Dragon. I mentioned before in my Pluto review that being slavishly faithful in adapting a comic book to the screen isn't always the right call. If you're just copying the manga panels frame by frame, it can compromise how the anime adaptation looks, and there's benefits to experimenting with things like the storyboarding and camera angles. In Frieren's manga, the scene where Stark kills the Solar Dragon is just six manga panels, but the staff for the anime decided to make it into a full-on action scene that's packed to the gills with dynamic camera angles, experimental animation that favors fluidity, kineticism, and impact over staying on-model, and creative storyboarding that no static medium could imitate. One thing I did notice about the anime is that it really seems to like using negative space. There's tons of scenes where the background is just the sky and nothing else, whether it be framing a character's face or taking up 80% of the scene, and there's just something about the way its used in Frieren that just feels so atmospheric.

Speaking of atmospheric, the soundtrack! I've only just started becoming familiar with Evan Call's portfolio, but he's been hitting home runs with all the soundtracks he's been making. Josee, My Happy Marriage, and now Frieren. I've heard his music for Violet Evergarden is pretty good too, but I haven't seen that yet. But hot damn, Frieren might just be his best and most versatile soundtrack yet, mainly in that it makes really good use of folk music and Irish or Celtic sounds to really give it that Tolkien fantasy feel. The same goes for the action, which often times mixes folk music with epic choirs, which actually made a better combination than I expected. Whether it be subtle oboes and acoustic guitars or a full-on orchestra, Frieren's soundtrack goes hard, and I didn't find any moments where its usage felt inappropriate or out of place. That being said...I'm gonna get lynched for saying this, but I wasn't really a fan of the first opening or the ending song. The visuals and lyrics for them are find, I'd argue astounding for the former, but...I don't know, every time I hear YOASOBI sing, I always wind up mistaking her for a Vocaloid, and the robotic-sounding voice she uses just feels...off for a series like this. Milet doesn't have this problem, but her voice hurts my ears whenever she tries to go for the high notes. Ironically, I liked her song "Bliss" more than "Anytime Anywhere," and I wish the former had been the ending theme song instead. I do like the second opening, though.

But the characters are where Frieren as a show really shines. Even if they do start out as recognizable archetypes, the series really takes its time to show what they're like: How they behave, feel, and interact with each other, along with expressing their opinions on various matters and showing what they're like outside of whatever conflict they're facing, all done with a superb attention to detail, to the point where you can't sum them their personalities up in just one sentence. Having the series start from defeating the Demon King rather than ending with it probably helped in this regard, because Frieren as a show isn't about the epic monster fights or some grand journey to save the world, it's about how important making/maintaining friendships and connections are and how they can make an impact on people no matter how fleeting the encounter. It's kind of like Natsume's Book of Friends in that its approach to characterization favors subtlety over excessive melodrama, and many of the post-Demon King adventures Frieren finds herself on lean more into being laid-back and heartwarming, exploring how Frieren's journey impacted her in both big and small ways. Even the minor characters Frieren and her party meet have their own stories to tell, and don't feel like just generic NPCs who just take up space. Frieren is a series that actually puts in effort to get you to care about our main party, and on that front, I think it succeeded with aplomb.

Seriously, you have no idea how much I want to hail this series as an undisputed masterpiece. Alas, not even Frieren is perfect. I already mentioned my issues with the first opening and ending themes, but those feel more like nitpicking than anything. One thing even fans of the manga tend to dislike about Frieren is one particular tournament arc that puts Frieren's adventures on hold for over 20 chapters and embracing more generic shounen tropes that feel out of place in a series like this. While that particular arc isn't bad, I do agree that it's not as good as the stuff before it. The second half of the anime covers this particular arc, and now that I think about it, the whole arc and the justification the series tries to argue for it does come off as really silly, especially in regards to how one character approaches the third test and how she treats Frieren even though she's, y'know, the strongest living mage ever. Yeah, I don't like Serie. She's a petty brat who really needs a good slap to the face. There was one aspect of Sein's introduction episode that really rubbed me the wrong way, though that's a minor thing, and the English dub softened it a bit so it's not as off-putting. But really, those are the only criticisms I have of Frieren, and from what I've heard, there hasn't been a repeat of the mage exam arc since. I should probably get back to reading the manga.

It's honestly a modern miracle that Frieren even got a high quality adaptation at all, especially since anime don't usually get full 24-26 episode runs anymore, and Frieren wound up getting 28, which really helped the pacing and story progression. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is a series you need to see if you like a more character-driven fantasy that favors subtlety and atmosphere over action and melodrama. For me, while Frieren didn't become one of my favorite anime of all time (If this had come out when I was much younger, it probably would have dethroned Shounen Onmyouji as my favorite anime of all time), it did remind me of why I really love anime as a medium and as an art form, even if the current anime landscape is still overrun with soulless, corporate, substanceless isekai wish fulfillment power fantasies made only to cater to the lowest common denominator. But even beyond that, Frieren is living proof that it's the execution that matters, along with how an adaptation, if put in the right hands, can help a series thrive and become beloved for years to come. There's still more Frieren after the point where the anime ends, but it could very well stand toe-to-toe with greats such as Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Clannad, and many other anime that have been revered over the years. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is a series that absolutely earned its popularity, and here's hoping its success continues in the future.

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Mar 4, 2024

Lady Georgie (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Shoujo stuff tends to get the short end of the stick when it comes to getting ported to the US, but in some circles that seems to be changing quite a bit. Discotek Media has started making an effort to put out more shoujo and magical girl stuff as of late, something many fans are very happy about, especially since a lot of those titles either never came to the US officially or were neglected in previous years. One such title that Discotek put on Blu-Ray recently is Lady Georgie, based on the manga by Mann Izawa and Yumiko Igarashi that ran from 1982 to ... 1984. The anime was made concurrently with the manga in 1983, but it wouldn't get brought to the US until 2023, a whole forty years after its first premiere in Japan. It never even received good fansubs. Since it's so rare for eighties shoujo anime to get brought to the US in any capacity, I figured I'd buy Lady Georgie to give Discotek incentive to license more in the future. Hell, for all I know, they probably will in the future thanks to all the money Berserk is netting them right now. But now that I've actually watched the series...yeah, there are reasons why Lady Georgie never came to the US. I think its an okay show, and the changes the anime made to it might have actually helped it in a lot of ways, but Lady Georgie is not only very much a product of its time, it has a lot of elements that really would not fly today.

But what's the story, you might ask? Georgie Buttman (Yes, that is how her name is officially spelled. The people at Discotek confirmed it with the mangakas themselves) is a cheerful, energetic young girl living with her family on a farm in late 19th century Australia. However, even though her father and two brothers Abel and Arthur adore her very much, her mother Mary seems to resent her. What she doesn't know is that her family actually found her in the middle of a storm, with the only clue to her true lineage being a golden bracelet. But early in her life, Georgie grows up happily alongside her brothers, and at one point meeting and falling in love with the dashing Lowell J. Gray, the grandson of the then governor of Sydney. When Georgie finally learns the truth about her true heritage, she decides to journey to London to learn more about her birth parents and find Lowell again, with her brothers following in hot pursuit for reasons of their own.

Alright, there's no point in hiding it, so let's get the elephant out of the room: The bulk of Lady Georgie consists of a love triangle between Georgie and her two adopted brothers, so basically non-blood-related incest. For what little it's worth, compared to the manga, which has one of the brothers actually consummate their relationship with Georgie (Ugh!), the anime changes things drastically in that while Abel and Arthur do fight over her quite a bit and try to pursue her, it's completely one-sided on their parts and it never manages to go beyond simply confessing how they feel and eventually accepting the fact that Georgie rejected them. Thank God, because if Lady Georgie's anime had been a faithful adaptation of the manga, I wouldn't have touched it with a ten foot pole as I abhor sibling incest romance in anything. That's pretty much the only reason I even bothered to watch the anime, because it either removed or toned down a lot of the manga's grosser aspects, though that's not to say the anime is perfect. I have no interest in reading the manga for the fact that it actually makes the incest subtext actual text, so for anybody who's turned off by that, Lady Georgie's anime provides a better alternative.

Speaking of the anime, it's a serviceable production all things considered, even if it's held back by the limitations of the technology of the period and due to Japan's bubble economy not having happened yet, so it wouldn't have had the higher budget of later eighties anime. I do think Yumiko Igarashi's trademark shoujo character designs made transition to the screen pretty well, and what the anime lacks in fluidity and kinetic motion, it manages to make up for with well-drawn backgrounds and setpieces and really capturing the look of 19th century Australia. I will admit, as an American, my knowledge of Australia and its history is pretty limited, so I don't know how the anime producers went about researching Australia and whether their depiction of it is accurate or not. But even with my limited knowledge of Australia, I can say that no koala I've seen behaves the way Rapp does, and it's very easy to tell he's an original creation of the anime made solely to be a cute comic relief animal character, even though he flat-out disappears when the setting moves from Australia to London in the latter half. The music is pretty nice for its time period, and both the opening and ending, sung by Georgie's seiyuu Yuriko Yamamoto, are pleasant to listen to.

Remember in my review of Dear Brother, I mentioned that the anime for that added a lot of new scenes and expanded on some characters' backstories, which actually benefitted them quite a lot? Lady Georgie does the same thing. Since the manga is only 5 volumes long and the anime has 45 episodes, the anime opted to really expand on Georgie's early life in Australia, detailing her childhood starting from age 6-7 and ending when she turns 15. The manga actually starts just before the boomerang contest, but in the anime, the boomerang contest doesn't take place until episode 24, more than halfway into the anime's run, so most everything before then is anime original. I actually like that the anime took its time to flesh out Georgie, Abel, Arthur, and the rest of the characters early on, because it allows the audience to get invested in them before getting to the harder drama so you'll actually care what happens to them. If the anime had started at the same point as the manga, it probably wouldn't have made the same impact and would have resulted in a lot of pacing issues. Lady Georgie's slow and steady approach not only helps the characters, but the pacing and story progression, and it never feels like the anime is rushing to get through all its major plot points.

Interestingly enough, the anime also makes changes to some characters' personalities that actually humanize them more and make them feel less like one-note cartoonish villains. For example, in the manga, Georgie's adoptive mother Mary is abusive and cruel through and through, whereas the anime, while still keeping her resentment of Georgie and worries about Abel and Arthur falling in love with her, goes out of its way to show her at least trying to connect with Georgie and showing her genuine affection on occasion, making her feel more human and sympathetic, and her crueler moments hit harder, especially when Georgie learns the truth behind her lineage. Another character, Jessica, is made much less cartoonishly villainous. In the manga, she has a crush on Abel but when she finds out that he loves Georgie, she tries to hire a hitman to kill her while she's heading to London and even wishing she'd die. In the anime, she still crushes on Abel and gets jealous of Georgie, but her murderous plotting is excised in favor of having her just try to get Georgie out of the way via suggesting she get on a boat manned by a sailor she knows. It also tones down other villains' more crueler actions, such as removing Irwin drugging and raping Arthur in favor of just simply holding him prisoner and foiling Abel's attempts at saving him. I think the anime's changes really helped Lady Georgie, both from expanding on some characters' personalities and backstories, humanizing some and making them more sympathetic, or just getting rid of the grosser aspects of the whole incesty love triangle plot.

However, Lady Georgie isn't a perfect anime, and its pseudo-incest plot, while the biggest problem the series has, is just one of its problems. I found Lowell as a character to be rather bland and annoying, mainly because his reasons for falling in love with Georgie don't really have anything to do with Georgie herself, and a lot of the time he came across as objectifying her and seeing her as an ideal and a solution to all his problems rather than as a person. Furthermore, I know Japan has more lax views on child nudity, but there were several points in the anime where Georgie's bare chest is shown completely uncensored, most of which happen when Georgie is still in her early teens. Hell, one scene in the anime shows Arthur stripping naked and cuddling with an also naked Georgie in an attempt to share his body heat with her and save her life, and the way the scene is animated makes it look like they're about to have sex. Do I even need to go into how creepy and gross this is? Yeah, I think I'm starting to understand why the anime never got brought to the US until now. And keep in mind, Lady Georgie is considered a children's series. This is as far as anything goes between Georgie and Arthur, and like I mentioned before, Georgie never gets romantically involved with either adopted brother as opposed to the manga, but...this is still skin-crawlingly unsettling. Finally, the narrator. Decades ago, I reviewed another historical anime called Ie Naki Ko, or Nobody's Boy Remi, and while I love that show to death, one of my biggest complaints is how the narrator is really overused. Not only does the narrator talk in literally every episode, he had this bad tendency to spoil really important plot twists when the show would have been better off revealing them on its own. I think the narrator for Lady Georgie is even more obnoxious in that she does this as well, but also has the bad habit of not only spelling out the characters' thoughts and feelings like she's talking to toddlers, but restating past events that were already established previously. The narrator as a whole feels unneeded because the show does a good enough job of showing the characters growing and revealing the narrative organically. You could cut the narrator out entirely and nothing would be lost.

Other than the whole pseudo-incest love triangle going on, Lady Georgie is still your typical eighties shoujo melodrama, complete with family issues, theatrical acting, cheesy eighties sound effects, and over-the-top plot twists straight out of a soap opera. I do think the anime improved on the manga's problems quite a bit with what it did do, so I'm willing to give it kudos for the things it did right both on that front and on its own merits. I actually think the anime's best episodes are near the finale, where certain characters have to make hard decisions and face genuinely compelling moral dilemmas for the sake of others' happiness, tackling them with a surprising amount of maturity and realism. But overall, Lady Georgie is very much a product of its time, and a lot of what it does absolutely would not fly in the modern era. But if you like this series, I'm not going to judge you for it. I should be happy that Discotek Media put Lady Georgie out on blu-ray in the US, because if enough people buy the series, it'll give them incentive to license more old school shoujo series like Lady Lady, the 70s Haikara-san ga Tooru series, and Hello Sandybelle. We already got stuff like Rose of Versailles, Aim For The Ace, Dear Brother, and a few others like them, so who knows what the future might hold?

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Feb 28, 2024

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata (Manga) add

Recommended

Man, it seems like the yuri/shoujo-ai genre is going through some kind of renaissance, what with so many of those titles being ported to the US, and several of them actually managing to range from good to amazing. I don't typically find myself reading a lot of yuri or shoujo-ai manga, more due to lack of time and lack of interest in romance in general, but these past few years I read some really good ones, such as Goodbye My Rose Garden and Yume no Hashibashi, not to mention all the ones that are much more frank about exploring LGBT themes. I do plan on ... reading A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow at some point because I hear that one's really good, but I don't know when that'll be. On that note, I hadn't initially planned on reading The Summer You Were There because its premise made it seem like it was going to be an archetypal romantic comedy, but I wound up discovering through TVTropes that it's actually a tear-jerking drama on par with something like Your Lie In April and I Want To Eat Your Pancreas. I mention those two titles specifically because of certain plot developments that form the backbone of The Summer You Were There, and while I do genuinely like this manga, much more than I thought I would, there are some things holding it back from true greatness in my eyes.

Silver-haired high school girl Shizuku Hoshikawa is completely dead inside. She is burdened with guilt over an incident she caused years ago, and although she loses herself in writing her own self-made novels, even that no longer brings her any joy. When summer break starts, Shizuku had initially planned on throwing away her novel and ending it all. As she's about to do so, a popular classmate, Kaori Asaka, picks her novel out of the trash, took it home to read, and showers Shizuku with praise the next day, asking if she'll write more stories, as she's a huge fan of her work. When Shizuku tells her she has no plans on writing anymore, Kaori isn't going to take this news lying down. Kaori suggests that the two of them become a fake couple so Shizuku can use the experience as material for her next novel. Only until the end of summer, that is. Shizuku at first isn't too fond of the idea, but Kaori inserts herself into her life whether she likes it or not. It's this fateful decision that serves as the impetus for an unforgettable summer together.

This is my first time reading one of Yuama's works, and for the most part, her art is pretty good. I say for the most part because sometimes the proportions on the characters' bodies can be off at times, like a nose will look crooked and legs or thighs will look too long, but it doesn't happen all that often and goes away in later volumes. The paneling is easy to follow, screen tones are used to good effect whenever possible, there's hardly any clutter in the backgrounds, and even the color pages are striking and beautiful. I will say that Yuama is really good at drawing facial expressions and really using them to convey a character's emotions during the more dramatic beats without them looking cartoonish or silly. Granted, they're not as strong as that of Yuu Watase's Sakura Gari, but they still do their job well.

For a story like this, the two main characters need to carry it, and thankfully, Shizuku and Kaori manage to do this pretty well. They both grow and change over the cource of the story, even if Kaori comes dangerously close to leaning into the dreaded Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. That being said, the story does try to have Kaori be more than just the perky sick girl plot device who's just there to fix Shizuku and advance her development. Going back to Your Lie In April and I Want To Eat Your Pancreas, I feel Kaori in this story is better written than Kaori Miyazono from Your Lie in April and Sakura from Pancreas, mainly in that she is shown to have unique character flaws that she has to deal with, develops alongside Shizuku, and does have a life outside of Shizuku, even if the manga's short length doesn't make it all that obvious. Sakura from Pancreas was literally nothing more than yet another cliche stereotype of a saintly tragic figure solely manufactured to advance the male lead's development and teach moral lessons, and Kaori from Your Lie In April, from what I've heard, is also that, and along with being really bratty, manipulative, and selfish, many felt her methods of helping the male lead overcome his trauma came across as extremely cruel, insensitive, and tone-deaf. Thankfully, Kaori in The Summer You Were There has far more depth to her than Sakura from Pancreas, is genuinely kind but not without a backbone, and never resorts to the mean-spirited tactics that Kaori Miyazono does, so she already has that going for her. On the other hand, I wish more had been done with some of the side characters, namely Kaori's sister Shiori, who literally has nothing to her other than worshipping Kaori and hating Shizuku. The rest of the side cast is perfectly fine.

If there's one thing I can say The Summer You Were There manages to pull off, its depicting bullying and the affects it has on people in a sensitive, nuanced, empathetic matter, and without resorting to condescension or melodrama. Granted, others might not agree, but your mileage may vary. The manga does succeed in making Shizuku sympathetic without trying to sugarcoat or downplay how bad her past actions were, nor does it try to invalidate or dismiss the trauma that Shizuku's bullying had on her classmate Ruri. I also appreciate that the manga doesn't try to make Ruri feel obligated to forgive Shizuku or force her to do so. Seriously, where was this nuance in stuff like A Silent Voice or Is It My Fault I Got Bullied? Yeah, I feel The Summer You Were There handled tackling the subject of bullying better than A Silent Voice. Come at me. As far as the later parts of Shizuku's backstory that get revealed near the finale, normally I would find something like that to be really cheesy and over-the-top, but I actually went through something similar years ago, so I'm letting it slide. Outside its depictions of bullying, the manga is a perfectly fine story, even if a lot of the stuff its done has been done many times before. You wouldn't be wrong to call it predictable based on everything that happens in its second half, and as much as I'm not a fan of the whole "sick girl helps the healthy MC" plotline because of how emotionally manipulative it can be if done wrong, The Summer You Were There did care about its characters and treated them with respect to the point where it did manage to get me genuinely invested in them, cliche plot or no. Granted, I know others might not feel the same way, so your mileage may vary on whether you even care about the second half of the story or not. To me, The Summer You Were There's refined execution and respect it has for its story and characters manage to elevate it beyond just a shoujo-ai rehash of I Want To Eat Your Pancreas.

Overall, while it relies a little too much on a certain cliche and doesn't develop the rest of its side characters, The Summer You Were There is a respectable shoujo-ai manga that manages to not only tackle a sensitive subject delicately, but avoids the common pitfalls that plague other stories of its caliber. Definitely give it a read if you like tragic romances that still manage to treat its characters with respect and empathy.

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Jan 26, 2024

Precure All Stars Movie F (Anime) add

Not Recommended

How? I don't understand. I get that Toei really likes to milk their franchises for all they're worth, with the All-Stars crossover movies for Pretty Cure being no exception. I generally don't bother with the All-Stars movies because I haven't seen every single Pretty Cure season ever made and I don't have the time to watch them all. But because Toei likes making money, they churned out yet another crossover movie, Pretty Cure All Stars F. I didn't think this was going to make a blip outside of Japan and fansubs because Pretty Cure hardly ever found an audience outside of Japan for a bunch ... of reasons that are way beyond the scope of this review. Yet, somehow...Not only did All Stars F become the highest grossing Pretty Cure movie in the franchise to date, complete with the highest opening weekend box office sales, but it was apparently enough to get exported and dubbed in other countries like Italy, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, Taiwan, and Cambodia. That baffles me, because having seen the movie myself...I don't understand how this was the movie that would help Pretty Cure get exported to other countries that never had it before. Why? Why this one? Why is THIS the movie that made the most bank, because there's nothing about it that makes it any different from other Pretty Cure All Stars movies. Plus, even without the fact that it's a Pretty Cure crossover movie, there's just so much wrong with it and how it handles everything that it frustrates me to no end.

I'm gonna get the biggest issue out of the way first: the plot. Not only does it feel like a flimsy excuse just to get a bunch of Cures from different series together, there's absolutely no structure or attempt at cohesion whatsoever. We're literally just thrown into the action right off the bat, and if you haven't seen any of the Pretty Cure seasons that this movie focuses on, you'll be absolutely baffled as to who the hell these characters are, how they even got to meet, and why we should bother caring about them. Even the reason for why everyone is in this situation in the first place only raises more questions than answers, and the resolution to it all is just a lot of magic, a lot of yelling, and a lot of Deus Ex Machinas that come right out of nowhere because we gotta get the kiddies to buy our products. What little stakes it has wind up being completely undermined by the fact that all it takes is the power of rainbows and speeches about friendship to magically fix everything, from broken buildings to even the end of the world apparently. At this point, the movie isn't even trying to hide the fact that its only purpose is to sell toys. I know other series, even other Pretty Cure series, have done this too, but All Stars F handles everything with all the subtlety and grace of an elephant on figure skates in a china shop.

Not only that, because of just how slapdash and shoddily put together the plot is, there's almost no point in talking about the characters because the only reason you'd even care about them and their plight is if you've seen the shows they starred in previously. If you're not already familiar with them or haven't seen the shows they belong to, they all come across as bland ciphers who only do stuff because the plot demands it. Then again, it's pretty hard to give about 20 or so characters any form of development in a movie whatsoever. Even the movie's attempts at developing the characters ring completely hollow because it completely throws logic out the window when doing so. In an early scene, Yukari and Lala get into an argument because the former doesn't want to stick to the group and wants to search for answers on her own, but Lala rightfully points out that not only would it be dangerous for her to do so considering their situation, there's safety in numbers, though what the movie doesn't mention is that they're in a snowy area and Yukari could easily get frostbite or hypothermia and die in the cold. Yukari calls Lala a bothersome child and runs off like a brat, and has to be rescued later and they reconcile. But for some reason, Lala is treated as being in the wrong and she's made to apologize for "not considering Yukari's feelings," which is complete bullshit because Lala's concerns were absolutely valid, and you'd think Yukari would know better than to go out into a blizzard all alone with no protection whatsoever. Uh, hello? Has she not heard of frostbite or hypothermia? I don't know what Yukari is like in Kira Kira Pretty Cure A La Mode since I haven't seen it yet, but her bratty behavior here did NOT endear me to her in any way, because how dare Lala not want her to fucking freeze to death. I couldn't even bring myself to like the new characters in this movie, and not just because Cure Supreme's design is awful and makes her look like a bad tie-dye Cure Echo with animal ears. God, her dead eyes freak me the hell out.

As much as I don't like All Stars F, it does have SOME good things going for it. It's a very bright, flashy, colorful movie. Flashes, beams, and sparkles abound, all animated with an insane amount of fluidity, with the hand-to-hand combat given just as much care and looking quite visceral. It certainly looks more cinematic than the Tropical Rouge movie, that's for sure. But good lord, why did the movie feel the need to animate the girls in really bad CGI in the final battle? Seriously, it looked awful, and they should have just stuck with doing it all 2D. The soundtrack is fine too, even though most of it is reused from Hirogaru Sky. But good animation and a decent soundtrack cannot fix this movie's flaws, and it's honestly no different from other All Stars movies that came before it...which honestly begs the question: Why the hell is THIS the movie that's getting exported to other countries and even getting dubs in their languages?! Most of which never even got any seasons past Heartcatch or Doki Doki, or even Yes Pretty Cure 5 for that matter! A movie like this REQUIRES you to be familiar with the characters and their parent series, so I can't fathom why Toei is pushing for this to receive international screenings, complete with dubs, when anybody in those countries who watches them won't know fuck-all about them because said series never got exported there previously! The only country I could plausibly see this working with is Italy, where Pretty Cure actually does have a solid stronghold in, but even they couldn't bring over every Pretty Cure series past Heartcatch because of Saban's shenanigans with Smile and Doki Doki.

So yeah, in the end, Pretty Cure All Stars F is just another marketing vehicle for Toei to push toys. Honestly, the whole movie feels like the animated equivalent of shaking keys in front of a child's face to keep their attention. Even by marketing vehicle standards, All Stars F just feels insulting, not just to kids' intelligence but to adults' because of how little regard it has for anything resembling cohesion and substance whatsoever. Look, I like Toei when they actually try, and I'm not trying to rag on the Pretty Cure series as a whole, because I do enjoy certain seasons. They're not perfect by any means, but when Toei actually puts in effort, they are able to make some truly great things. But this is not one of them. If you're looking for some bright colors to entertain you for 70 minutes or just want to watch your favorite Cures interact, feel free to give this a watch, but that's really all All Stars F has going for it, otherwise give it a miss.

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Jan 16, 2024

Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Oh, Mari Okada, I wish I knew how I felt about you as a creator. After her theatrical debut with Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms, she's back in the director's seat with a brand new movie, Maboroshi, or if you wanna use its Japanese title, Alice and Therese's Illusion Factory. No, I don't know why the Japanese title is so strange. I read something about how the names Alice and Therese, when said in Japanese together, also pronounce the name Aristotle in their language, which makes you wonder why they didn't just call it Aristotle's Illusion Factory, especially since there are no characters named ... Alice and Therese in the film, but I digress. Anyway, Mari Okada is pretty prominent in the anime circle, and people tend to be divided on what she works on or creates. Some like her stuff, others hate it, and some are mixed. There are anime she's worked on that I really love, such as AnoHana, Maquia, and Anthem of the Heart, but also titles that I'm really not a fan of, such as A Whisker Away, A Lull In The Sea, and Hanasaku Iroha. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you read her autobiography, as it's really enlightening and fascinating. Now that Maboroshi is out (I'm going to refer to it by the official English title that Netflix gave it for the sake of brevity)...unfortunately, I don't feel this movie is as good as Maquia. Someone on a blog I follow described it best, that Maboroshi is the most Mari Okada movie ever made, with all of her indulgences and writing tropes concentrated into one movie. Not gonna lie, they're absolutely right, and unfortunately, this isn't one of her better movies, which is a shame because there is a lot to like about it!

14-year-old Masamune Kikuiri is your average middle school kid who likes hanging with his friends and practicing drawing in his rural Japanese town. One day, an explosion at the local steelworks factory literally shatters the sky as if by magic, cutting the town off from the rest of Japan. Time is literally frozen. Nobody ages or grows old, the seasons never change, there's no new forms of entertainment, the world has truly become static. Everyone trudges on, hoping the world will right itself, but nothing changes. One day, Masamune has an unpleasant encounter with his mysterious classmate Mutsumi Sagami, who sneaks him into the abandoned factory to show him something...or rather, someone: A feral girl she's been taking care of in secret, whom Masamune names Itsumi. Upon getting to know her and the circumstances surrounding her imprisonment, Masamune discovers that Itsumi's existence might just be the key to figuring out why the town is in the state that its in. But some people fear what could happen if things change, doing all they can to keep the kids from helping Itsumi.

Gentle reader, I ask you, did you ever read that Ursula K. Le Guin book The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas and wonder why nobody in the book bothers to just rescue the abused child from their imprisonment? Mari Okada decided to actually do just that, taking that one question and building the whole house around it, which forms the backbone of Maboroshi. The story is actually the most interesting part about this movie, really going deep into examining just what being stuck in a truly static world and never physically changing does to a person and a whole community. Imagine being an elderly person who struggles with daily tasks who can't even die, or a pregnant woman whose child will never be born. It also explores what happens when people look to those who seem like they have the answers, even if the person in question is a crazy old coot whose explanations have no real basis in logic. Gee, that totally doesn't remind me of a cult leader or anything. The implications behind the world these people live in are really terrifying and depressing if you think about them, which is obviously intentional on the movie's part. Using all this to craft a story about the fear of change and the difference between making the best out of a bad situation and simply resigning yourself to it is done really well here.

The stellar animation and deliberately 90s music also really helps bring this dilapidated, static town to life, making it into a character of its own. Yes, Maboroshi is firmly set in the nineties on purpose, and kudos to the movie for really putting a lot of care into recreating that time period down to the last detail. Oh, and I bet you're wondering why the singer they brought on to sing the ending song has such an...interesting voice. Remember how in Maquia, Mari Okada really wanted to have Bravely Default veteran Akihiko Yoshida to do the character designs for the movie because she really liked his work? For Maboroshi, according an article on ANN, Okada personally asked popular singer Miyuki Nakajima to create an original song just for the movie because she really loved her songs, and the reason her voice sounds so distinct and unlike most of what you hear in anime movies is because Nakajima is 71 years old. I admit I'm not familiar with Nakajima's work besides Shin-On, but the fact that she's still singing well into her seventies is pretty amazing.

God, you have no idea how much I wish I could have liked this movie more than I do. The basic set-up is interesting, and I actually cared about Itsumi's plight. Unfortunately, the characters and how Okada uses them are the movie's biggest weakness. I thought the male lead, Masamune, was fine as a character. Not the most three-dimensional, sure, but he has his reasons for doing what he does and his insecurities and frustrations are relatable. However, other than him and Itsumi, none of the other characters are in any way interesting or compelling whatsoever, and there are several that feel really out of place in this movie. I really could have done without that pervy fat kid and his antics. This also leads into one of Okada's biggest weaknesses as a writer: For some reason she has this bad tendency to shove pointless love triangles/polygons in the stuff she works on, even when having them would feel really out of place and on characters that she really doesn't bother to develop or flesh out. There's a girl in the movie whose only reason for existing is to tell Masamune she has a crush on him, and for a really dumb reason at that, and to be fridged just to get the main conflict going, and I really couldn't give a shit about her because the movie never bothered to flesh her out beyond the fact that she has a crush on Masamune. Plus, I really didn't like Mutsumi as a character, and the fact that the movie introduces her by having her show her panties to Masamune just to give them a reason to interact is just...gross. You literally could have done anything else just to get them to talk to one another. Hell, Mutsumi spends a lot of her time being mean to Masamune and dragging him into her problems, with Masamune rightfully calling her out on her behavior a lot of the time...and then later in the movie they're suddenly in love and falling all over themselves for each other. And I'm sorry, but I could not buy their romance at all. Not only did they hardly ever spend time with one another for there to be any romantic or even friendly chemistry between them whatsoever, Mutsumi spends so much of the movie being a bitch that I really couldn't see why Masamune would even fall in love with her in the first place. Every attempt at romance in this movie seems thrown in there just for the sake of shoving in some contrived drama when they could easily be cut out to make for time to actually develop the characters. You could literally cut most of the side characters out of the movie and it'd probably be better off.

And for as much as I like the overall story for this movie, a lot of the conflict stems from people acting like arrogant pricks who can't use their heads for one second or even refusing to do really basic things that could have been resolved things right then and there. There's so many plot threads left hanging and basic questions the movie just flat-out doesn't answer because it's more concerned about having every character fall in love than actually doing something. Man, it sucks that I couldn't enjoy this movie more, because it does have some genuinely great stuff in it, and I think its great that Mari Okada is being allowed to do more of what she wants as a creator. I certainly hope she gets to do more things after this. But I and other people find that her works tend to be better when she has someone to reign her in sometimes or if she just cuts the needless romantic drama bullshit. So yeah, I prefer Maquia over Maboroshi, as the latter is a little too preoccupied with pointless drama to care much about character development or really making full use of its potential. But that's not to say Maboroshi doesn't have anything to offer, like I mentioned above. If you like the movie, more power to you. Maboroshi isn't the best or worst thing Okada made, and I hope the next movie she makes is successful. Oh, and I recommend you watch the English dub, both because it is genuinely very good, and because they cast an actual child actress to play Itsumi, which makes her sound far more authentic and bearable to listen to compared to putting up with the literal auditory nightmare that is Misaki Kuno's squeak toy voice.

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